Dinghy McDingface has a new look

In 2016, back in New Zealand, we replaced Maunie's old and leaking dinghy with a brand new one - a French-made Zodiac. This was about the time of the Boaty McBoatface story (where the British Antarctic Survey rashly and hilariously decided to let the British Public vote for a name for its new exploration vessel that subsequently became the Sir David Attenborough), so Maunie's new boat became Dinghy McDingface, or DMD for short.

The original story of the launch can be found here

Though the boat worked really well we soon began to realise that its build quality wasn't great and the PVC tubes began to degrade quite alarmingly in the fierce Pacific sunshine. Not quite as alarmingly as the storage cover, though, which seemed to dissolve before our eyes under the glare of UV light, so a complaint to Zodiac resulted in their sending us a replacement which we then covered with Sunbrella acrylic to make it last.

Making a new cover for the cover in Australia

By the end of last year the boat was no longer useable, leaking both water and air and with the safety barrier between the two air chambers leaking as well. Clearly it was time for a change but our dilemma was that the hard-hull, folding-transom design was just perfect for Maunie's foredeck and, having gone to all the effort of making the cover, it would be a waste, not to mention an environmental disaster, to throw it all away.

Thankfully there's a brilliant business near Dartmouth called Tilley Inflatables which specialises in re-tubing and repairing inflatables. Mike Tilley has taken the business on from his father and he had a good look at the boat, made a few "mmm, looks tricky" noises but agreed that the old tubes were beyond repair and he could replace them in Hypalon - a much higher quality material far more resistant to UV than PVC. It wasn't a cheap option - costing more than a brand new Zodiac - but we decided to go for the re-build. It gave us the option to move to a more, ahem, eye-catching colour scheme and Mike did some great work to re-position the lifting handles which, in the original design, were stupidly placed right where the tubes folded so were coming unstuck. We also cleaned up the design, to remove unnecessary extra handles and fittings, and the old tubes could be sent to be recycled.

Yesterday Graham collected it and launched at Darthaven.

A sneaky reveal as it's unpacked 

No chance of not spotting that on a crowded pontoon!

New look, vs the original, shown below on its launch day:

The dusty cover needs a bit of a clean but DMD is now reunited with the mothership

We are really pleased with how it's worked and it's great to know that we have given the boat a new (and hopefully long) life. 

Big boats but very little wind

The dominant high pressure may be bringing us hot, dry weather but it also means that there is precious little wind to be found just at the moment. However, we've just had a lovely long weekend aboard Maunie and a few vessels that we met certainly made things interesting, even if the sailing was pretty tame.

This was the view on the River Dart on Thursday evening - a fleet of 'traditional' superyachts anchored after the first leg of a race series called the Richard Mille Cup. Richard Mille (I had to look this up) is a brand of designer watches for people who think it's socially acceptable casually to strap a timepiece that costs more than a boat to their wrists. More than a very flash boat, actually; the cheapest model comes in at a mere $84,000 and most sell for about $200,000.

Anyway, forgetting the social injustices of superyachts and their owners for a moment; the star of the show was Adix, a 286 footer built in 1984, currently valued at about $25M and owned by a Spanish Billionaire Jaime Botin, Chairman of Groupo Santander. Senor Botin is clearly a man of taste to buy such a yacht but in 2020 he was charged and sentenced to 18 months in jail after attempting to smuggle a Picasso painting out of Spain aboard the boat. Sorry, I forgot to forget the social injustices of superyachts and their owners for a moment there. Anyway this is a photo from Superyacht Times of Adix, enjoying more wind that she did this week.

Back aboard the more modestly priced Maunie, we had a motor passage in calm waters west past Salcombe then a lovely couple of hours with the Parasailor flying.

We arrived at the River Yealm mid-afternoon and enjoyed a relaxed night on the visitors' pontoon, chatting to the crews of neighbouring yachts. As the light was beginning to fail, a charter yacht with a father and his two teenage kids aboard rafted alongside us; unfortunately when they left at 08.00 the following morning the fast-running current got the better of their inexperience and they nearly wrapped their boat around Maunie's stern. Thankfully there was no damage, apart from their pride, but it very nearly went very wrong indeed.

We waited for favourable tide to help us back towards Dartmouth so spend the rest of the morning relaxing and doing a few little jobs that we somehow never seem to get around to. Vital things, like relabelling the halyard clutches so that crews unfamiliar with the boat can find the right rope easily.

Nautical terms that all mean something important!

Unfortunately our return passage was all under engine as the wind never rose more than about 4 knots. At least we had about 2 knots of favourable tide scooting us around Start Point and, as we headed in towards the Dart, we had another Big and Expensive Vessel encounter:

This is a ship called The World where wealthy folk who don't buy superyachts instead buy a suite on board and then join the ship wherever, and for as long, as they fancy. We first saw her in Sydney Harbour and then again in Falmouth where she was temporarily laid up during the Covid crisis.

Overall, a very pleasant weekend on the water - just hope for some wind next time!